The sub-zero heroes are back … for fourths.

Ice Age: Continental Drift is more like a Happy Meal than a movie. It’s another serving of exactly the same product that millions of families have been served before and will come back to again and again. Its brand-name familiarity and reassuring sameness are its stock in trade. Nothing is different except for the toys: Last time it was dinosaurs; this time it’s pirates. It’s more resolutely like the three previous Ice Age movies than they are like themselves.

Oh, the pros and cons of each film shift about. The original is the only one that really works: a nice exercise in shtick, with some real heart amid the clunkier bits, and the crowd-pleasing wordless slapstick of Scrat the...READ MORE

There’s no ‘left’ or ‘right,’ in the Catholic social doctrine, Matthew Bunson says.

DENVER — Critics who accuse the U.S. bishops of “partisanship” have misunderstood their motives by viewing religious questions in secular terms, supporters of the Catholic hierarchy say.

“The media has no quibble at all when the bishops issue a statement questioning some aspects of Paul Ryan’s budget, or when they express their support of recent decisions on the part of the Obama administration relating to immigration,” Church historian Matthew Bunson said. “It’s only when the bishops decide to exercise their authority in areas the media disagrees with” — such as the marriage, sexuality or theological orthodoxy — “that the bishops are suddenly ‘reactionary.’”

ROME, Italy — A former head of the Vatican’s congregation on saints’ causes said Pope Benedict XVI could beatify his predecessors Pope John Paul I and Pope Paul VI during the upcoming Year of Faith.

Although the process beatification is “generally very complex, in this case, the phases have been moving ahead,” Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, told Italian newspaper Corriere delle Alpi June 25.

After the beatification of John Paul II in May of 2011, Pope Benedict’s possible beatifications of John Paul I and Paul VI would be the first time in history that a Pope has beatified three of his predecessors.

MEXICO CITY — The results of Mexico’s presidential elections, completed last week, have been a source of concern and even consternation for many, both among Mexicans themselves and foreign observers. The narrative, mimetically transmitted through the international media, is a deceptively simple one: The Leviathan party that ruled Mexico for more than 70 years, the legendary “perfect dictatorship,” has returned to power.

Indeed, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had a stranglehold on Mexican politics for generations, quashing dissent through a combination of repression and graft, has earned its reputation for corruption, a reputation that it is finding difficult to shed....READ MORE

WASHINGTON —When talks between the White House and the U.S. bishops stalled this spring, Church leaders focused on an array of legal and legislative remedies designed to repeal a coercive federal contraception mandate that forced Catholic institutions to violate moral doctrine.

Now, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will be evaluating a new proposal that is designed to "repeal" financial penalties that could be imposed on religious employers who fail to comply with the contraception mandate, but is not crafted with the intent of rescinding the mandate itself.Authored by two Republican lawmakers,Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Diane Black, R-Tenn., the proposed Religious...READ MORE